I am great at painting cars however i don't seem to have a need to buff the paint until now. I buffed the 98 silverado with machine and mothers wash kit. I ****ed up and there are swirl marks all over my truck. How would i go about fixing this by hand buffing.. Its base coat clear coat. If worst comes to worst i'll paint the truck over or clear it

3M has a new product called ULTRAFINA. It is a blue liquid product that you use with a bspecific blue foam buffing pad. Use this last after compounding and machine glaze. All your swirls will be a thing of history.

Most swirl mark removers are just fillers that will wash off in a month or so. Depending on how deep you cut into the clear it will have to be re-buffed with a professional high grade swirl mark remover and glaze and a foam pad.

Swirl marks need to be removed with a fine compound usually referred to as a polish. Don't use glaze to fill the scratches, they must be removed or they'll haunt you forever. You could rub it out by hand but it'll take a weekend or longer. I've seen people swirl cars so bad that they needed to be colorsanded again (superduty compound,knotted wool pad, fresh paint). I've also witnessed damage from buffing a dirty surface when some nice sandy grit gets swirled around in the buffer-don't buff in a windstorm and make sure you keep the paint surface and buffer clean of foreign matter, buff indoors.

Yeah if the swirls are bad, the swirl remover will only fill them for awhile. You want to elimate them is as much as possible in the initial compounding stage.

When I compound or polish, I first buff small square sections and when color sanding scratches are gone and got the gloss back, go over the whole panel with only a small amount of compound. I start speeding up a bit when there isn't much compound left, making long passes as far as I can the length of panel, and watching the swirls. This is the way I do it at least and what has worked best for me when using a compound. Its also important to keep the pad cleaned of compound often.

Since sanding finer, switching to foam pads, fighting swirls in the finish has become easier for me. I very seldom pull out the wool pad now. A foam pad is also a bit more forgiving.

I was one of the super duty wool pad guys, this is how shops I was in use to do it, sand with 1000 and then grab the superduty and wool pad. But that can create some nasty swirls to fight.

Trying to remove by hand would be tough for sure. Almost need the speed of a buffer, By hand with compound can create some scratches of its own, and hard to get the lighteness back out of it. Only thing I'll do by hand sometime is a easy to remove glaze sometimes, or spots no hope of getting with a buffer. Its enough work for me as it is. Not sure whats really in the kit you used, but maybe a fine cut polish, foam pad will do ya, or even the product you used, and keeping the pad cleaned of buildup.

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